Teaching and Technology

1. To me, the most relevant part of Dr. Robert's presentation was his description of the difference between media exposure and media use.  I think this is a critical aspect of how our students are using technology today.  Students aren't just watching TV or surfing the internet or listening to music; they are watching TV AND surfing the internet AND listening to music, simultaneously.  This increase in the amount of messages being received by kids requires a fundamental difference in thinking: an ability to split one's attention and multitask.  In my opinion, this is why we are seeing such short attention spans in the classroom.  I also think this is why we are experiencing a spike in disorders like ADHD.  How can we possibly expect students to sit down and focus on a few tasks over the course of an hour when they are used to doing several things within a matter of seconds?  I am not saying this is a good thing, but it is nonetheless our reality.  The real issue is how we as teachers are going to address these new styles of thinking and, consequently, learning.

2-3.  The NY Times article "More Pupils are Learning Online, Fueling Debate on Quality" brings to my mind many implications for education, my school community, and my own teaching.  I'd like to touch upon the point I made in the first question: having this kind of relationship with technology is making it harder for students to concentrate for longer periods of time.  In some ways, having classes that can be taken in shorter snippets might help address this emerging manner of cognition.  Students can take classes at their own speed and follow their own interests, to some degree.  However, there are a lot of problems that need to be addressed with online learning, such as plagiarism and cheating.  If we are really going to embrace online learning, we have to create systems that shut down these easy avenues to dishonesty.  For example, all online classes should incorporate Plagiarism Checker or another similar software in order to deter any kind of "copy and paste" mentality.  In terms of my school community, I am already seeing a move in this direction.  Two years ago, we began testing online classes at our high school with our AP Art course.  This class was popular and yielded commendable AP test scores.  So, the following year offered a few more online selections.  We have had a lot of luck with these.  As a private school, though, we also have a motivated student body, so it's hard to say how much of the success came from the course structure and how much came from student self-discipline.  When it comes to teaching, I know the digital classroom is part of the future of education.  Even if we do not move to an entirely online system, I do believe all classes will have to incorporate online components, whether that be in the form of virtual meetings, webquests, blog writing, etc.

4. For this question, I explored four educational web links.  In each, I found an important tool to help support student learning in my classroom.  The first link I visited was http://www.dropbox.com/.  This link is really cool: it is a web-based storage site that allows users to set up a communal space to share materials of any kind.  This makes it possible for students to collaboratively work on multimedia projects from the comfort of their own homes.  We all have heard our students talk about how difficult it was for a group to meet up outside of class.  This website makes that hardship much more manageable.  It does require access to a computer on which one can download the dropbox software, which may not be possible for all students.  For that reason, this might be a better resource for the more affluent schools.  The second site I visited was http://www.techsmith.com/download/jing/.  This site is phenomenal! It is a free client that allows the user to record what happens on the computer screen and create a video.  If that is not awesome enough, it can also insert narration or captioning.  This really fits into the theme of the NY Times article mentioned in questions 2-3.  As we are moving to more and more online learning, this will undoubtedly be one of the techniques used.  This also provides the tools for more comprehensive student presentations.  The third source I looked into was http://citationmachine.net/.  I did a little extra research into the citation websites and this, in my opinion, is the most reliable one.  It most often provided the correct formatting for citations in MLA and APA (I am not very familiar with the other two forms and would not be able to identify correct citation, so I did not look into those portions of the website).  If we are to really combat plagiarism in student work, we need to provide our students with the knowledge of and tools for proper citation.  The fact of the matter is: if we can make proper citation easy on our students, then it will be more likely that they use proper citation.  This website is a great step in making it easy.  The last site I visited was http://teachertube.com/ .  As a teacher, I find myself often scouring the vast depths of Youtube in search of a clip that will bring the subject matter to life for my kids.  Well, this site is basically Youtube specifically for teachers; it is a place where teachers can share educational videos with one another in the hopes of providing a more multifaceted curriculum to every classroom.  It takes a lot of the guesswork out of the choosing process in terms of a video’s validity, which is a huge relief.  I am already starting to find a few videos I can use in the future.